U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Andrew Gibbons saw a need for a more thorough training in Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) skills for incoming Ports and Waterways Safety Assessment (PAWSA) project officers and decided to leverage his time in the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Emergence Program in pursuit of that goal.

The result was Gibbons’ Emergence change initiative entitled, “Call for Geospatial Information Systems Training: Ports and Waterways Safety Assessments Officers.”
The USCG Waterway Risk Assessment Officer, based in Alexandria, VA, said the Emergence Program “equipped me with the framework that I used to develop my change initiative.”
“The exercise of developing a well-researched action plan and then distilling it down to a focused white paper challenged me to focus my initiative on its core elements, while communicating them efficiently and effectively,” Gibbons said.
Gibbons’ change initiative calls for providing a “robust GIS onboarding program” to new PAWSA project officers at the Coast Guard Navigation Center, located in Alexandria, VA.
He describes the PAWSA as a “standardized Coast Guard approach to identify major waterway safety hazards, estimate risk levels, evaluate potential mitigation measures, and provide the groundwork for implementation of selected risk reduction strategies.”
To that end, the PAWSA goals are to gather stakeholder input for purposes of identifying major waterway trends, safety hazards, and potential mitigation strategies; bolster public-private partnerships to enhance cooperation across the U.S. Marine Transportation System (MTS); and advocate for future projects impacting the MTS.
At the Coast Guard Navigation Center, Gibbons explained, PAWSA project officers are active-duty Coast Guard Lieutenants who are responsible for preparing geospatial data visualizations in preparation for and facilitating two-day PAWSA workshops across the nation.
While PAWSA project officers possess diverse Coast Guard professional backgrounds ranging from Afloat Operations to Maritime Prevention fields and each new officer brings their unique operational experience to the team, informing their abilities to examine quantitative data, facilitate discussion of risks, and capture mitigations provided by stakeholders, he said what is unique to their role is a “heavy reliance upon GIS technical skills.”
Gibbons said thus far he has submitted a request for analysis to receive a Job Task Analysis to identify gaps in training and standardize existing training formats in order to identify what key elements are needed to be included to provide a robust GIS onboarding program to the newly PAWSA officers.
Following a successful Project Validation Meeting, he said his proposal was scored for prioritization and accepted for inclusion to the Coast Guard Force Readiness Command Training – Analysis, Consulting, and Evaluation Branch’s active worklist.
Gibbons said it was determined that the performance analysis should be accepted with a projected start date in the final quarter of this year.
Overall, Gibbons said CHDS played a key role in helping him learn how to view and understand homeland security more holistically.
“CHDS has profoundly shaped the way that I think about the Homeland Security Enterprise by drawing connections between interagency partners, shared resources, and opportunities for collaboration,” he said. “The Emergence program challenged me to view national security from a global strategic perspective and led me to expand my view beyond my organization to understand how the Department of Homeland Security operates as a whole. As a result, I am now more knowledgeable and more capable of meeting the demands of safeguarding our nation’s security in today’s constantly changing threat landscape.”